fishy fishy fishy

sa-bai-deeee!!

I’m sitting in a lone internet cafe, with a strange orange stray cat on my lap. It doesn’t have a tail, and its looking at me really funny, but if I try to move it might go crazy?! Anyways, onto Laos… To sum up the last 3 weeks, LAOS is fantastic, and crazy, and weird, and beautiful. People move at their own pace, which makes me feel like a local as I slowly trudge along. People are so lazy here, you have to beg someone at a ‘resturant’ (more like their own home) to take your food order. & then when it is time to pay, you have to track them down again and basically count the money in their face for them to take it! Charades and pointing are key to understanding, of course with the accompanied tilted head nod even though you have no idea what you agreed to. I love it though, no rush, no efficiency, nothing really makes sense, this country makes up the rules as they go along & I don’t want to leave! We went out for a fancy meal the other night– some roof top bar, we thought we were really living in style. Escaping the no a/c, no fan room in sweltering heat, for some fantastic views of downtown Pakse. I thought I’d be daring and order fish, everyone raves about the fish here, and with the river in view.. I knew exactly where it came from. I ordered fish with a bit of lemon season. After the pointing and head nodding nonsense, the orders were finally in. The waiter brought out not a nice cleanly fillet fish… but Flounder himself. A fried fish staring at me with his dried up little eyeballs a big grin on his face just daring me to try a taste. Where do I start: scales, bones, fins, tales, eyeballs. Gross. I am a broke traveler, I’m not suppose to do all this fancy ordering. I’m sticking to fried rice and fresh mango from now on!